Women’s Day | How the Indian woman spends her time and energy

On the occasion of women's day, we look at what recent surveys tell us about how women spend their time and energy

According to the recently released Time Use Survey, the female rate of participation in unpaid household labour was more than 80%. Only 25% of women surveyed engaged in employment or related activities during the surveyed period. This is despite the Female Labour Participation Rate increasing from 23.3% in 2017-18 to 41.7% in 2023-24, as noted by the Economic Survey tabled in Parliament by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on January 31, 2025.

As Women’s Day rolls around, programmes are held, awards given and notable figures felicitated. Detractors raise murmurs about the need for such a day at all, asserting that enough change has transpired already. DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programmes are being rolled back by the US government vide executive orders. A 2024 study in England saw 47% of Britons saying that women’s equality has gone far enough.

Closer home, only 23% of Indians surveyed for a Pew Research Center study believed there was a lot of discrimination against women in the country. This was even as the study noted a preference for traditional economic roles when there were few jobs available, with 80% generally agreeing men should have more rights to a job than women, including 56% who completely agree with the statement.

So what does the average Indian woman experience and how is her day structured? We examine some recent surveys to arrive at a broader picture of the day-to-day of an Indian female.

On February 25, the National Statistics Office released an all-India Time Use Survey covering the period from January 2024 to December 2024. This was the second instance of this survey, conducted for the first time in 2019, which tracks the time fractions of the population expend on certain activities as delineated in accordance with the International Classification of Activities for Time-Use Statistics (ICATUS) 2016. This includes time spent in activities including empoyment, unpaid caregiving, production of goods and services for own use, volunteer and trainee work, and unpaid domestic service, as well as time spent on learning, social and community participation, practice of religion, leisure and cultural activities, and self-care. Other countries like Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, USA and China have conducted similar nation-wide Time Use surveys.

According to the 2024 survey, which measured activity for a reference period of 24 hours, 81.5% of female participants participated in unpaid domestic services, while the rate for men was 27.1%. Meanwhile, 34% of female participants undertook undertook unpaid caregiving for household members, as contrasted with 17.9% of male participants. If the proportion of time in a day is considered, males spent 2.6% of their day on unpaid domestic and care work, while females spent 19.7%

According to the press release associated with the survey, 75% of males and 25% of females between the ages of 15 to 59 years participated in employment and related activities. Without the breakdown by age, the figures stood at 60.8% for males and 20.7% for females.